


A Handful of Firsts

by welcometocabeswater



Series: A Series of Firsts [1]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Cabeswater - Freeform, First Kiss, Firsts, M/M, The Barns, hand kinks, sleeping cows, tattoo fixations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-05-01 16:07:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5212199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/welcometocabeswater/pseuds/welcometocabeswater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam's always pictured exactly how it'll go. </p><p>A series of drabbles about a couple of Ronan and Adam's firsts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. First Kiss

**Author's Note:**

> All respect to Maggie Stiefvater, who is the mother to these moody teens. 
> 
> This is just a fic dump of my multi-part Pynch drabbles over on the tumblrs. :)

I.

They’re skittish at first, Dancing around each other and the unspoken thing between them. Ronan’s made it abundantly clear that under no uncertain terms will he be making the first move, if his gifts and subtle gestures are anything to go by. He worries they’re headed into inevitable danger, and Adam’s not sure he’s ready to sacrifice their easy friendship for a leap into the unknown, but at the same time, he’s never been more certain of anything in his life. Ronan is a mistake he’s willing to make; one that he has to make. 

They’re pressed up against one another, shoulder to shoulder, from hip to shin in an easy silence as the sun sets above them. Ronan drove the BMW up a hill only to dare Adam to tumble head over foot back down again. Adam thinks he sets the dare just to hear him laugh as they roll bodily down the steep slope, gathering grass stains and pumping adrenaline as they go. Gravity sends Ronan pitching into Adam’s side as the hill plateaus at the bottom. The Earth tilts on its axis and Adam can’t tell if its the dizziness or the sudden proximity of Ronan’s body pressed home against his, but his heart is set off-kilter. Ronan’s looking at him, his blue eyes sharp and intent as he exhales his own lightheadedness warm against his face. 

He’s thought about this moment; let the infinite possibilities wash over him in multitudes during the many hours he doesn’t quite have to himself. He knows how he wants it to go. He’s dreamt it up and if ever he had the power to pull something out of his dreams, as Ronan does, it would be this. 

And so, when Ronan’s own brand of gravity shifts him ever closer to Adam, he pulls tentatively away. His breath hitches in anticipation, then releases, at peace with what he’s about to do. 

“Take me to the Barns,” he whispers, a soft breath of a sigh caressing those sharp cheekbones. Ronan pulls back far enough to focus eye to eye in mild surprise. It takes only a moment before Ronan’s careful mask swallows up his bewilderment. He nods.

 

II.

 

Ronan is silent the entire drive down to the barns. His heart palpitates, a wild animal clawing for freedom from the cage of his ribs at the prospects of this spontaneous visit to his childhood home. much of what was communicated between him and Adam was left in the periphery of their conversations. He had learned to read between the lines of their unspoken words. In asking ronan to take him to the barns- his <i>home</i>, where he feels safe, swathed in happy memories of a loving family that once was- he's entrusting him with something bigger. Bigger than both of them, bigger than Cabeswater, bigger than everything they had ever faced together. Whatever it is (and Ronan has his suspicions), they are certainly in this together.

He sneaks sidelong glimpses of Adam, quiet in the passenger’s seat of his BMW. The tired shadows smudged beneath each eye on his elegant, freckled face completely contradict the wide-awake, fully alert squaring of his shoulders. Adam parrish is a livewire and he is practically emitting sparks. 

Ronan returns his gaze to the road.

 

III.

 

Cabeswater felt the stirrings before either of them did. _The Greywaren and the Magician_. A seismic shift begins to settle over the forest, not like previous rattlings against its protective walls. This bears no threat, but a new beginning. A union, long since foretold. The forest can feel the tension resolving all along its tree roots and river banks, deep in its soil. And as its two boys pull back the heavy sliding door to the main barn where the greywaren spent his earliest of days, Cabeswater sighs a tickle of wind in its dead language against their ears: _so it is, may it be_.

 

IV.

 

Adam’s hand slides tentatively against Ronan’s as they enter, a subtle gesture that shouldn’t kick his heart into overdrive, yet here they are. the questioning press of fingers tingles against his palm as they make their journey to fold between each of his war battered knuckles. the look adam gives him is full of challenge.

Ronan’s fingers curl tight and firm and sure around Adam’s. He swallows back the doubt constricting his throat as his heartbeat hammers loudly away against his ears like a kickdrum. 

“Did you hear that?” Adam barely breathes, batting an invisible obstruction away from his good ear with his free hand. “The Latin,” he clarifies.

“Yes.” Ronan nods once, his lips pressed into a thin line. “Looks as though Cabeswater’s been waiting for us.”

And it had. Along the high beams of the barn, flowers bloom, pure white and glistening with evening dew, snaking a trellis all along the ceiling and walls. Adam takes a careful step into the building, conscious of the perpetually dozing cows, folded up on the ground like a dozen tranquil paper cranes. He reaches up with his free hand in an attempt to graze one of a dozen tiny glowing yellow orbs floating about the dim space.

“Fireflies!” he notes in unadulterated awe of the magic winding its way around them. He returns his gaze to Ronan, whose eyes never left him. The wonder plain in Adam’s eyes and pulling at his stoically melancholic lips tugs deep at his soul and he wants to stamp this permanently into his memory; never forget this moment with the wonder in Adam’s eyes, the smile on his broken mouth, and his hand smooth in his for the first time. 

“We can’t get any fucking privacy, can we?” Ronan breaks the silence and Adam laughs, a light, comfortable, surprised laugh as he tugs ronan further in. He over-balances as Ronan’s weight pulls after him and they stumble, laughing together, down against the flank of a sleeping cow. 

“I think it’s perfect,” Adam admits, and he honestly couldn’t have picked a better time and place for any of this.

“For what exactly, parrish?” ronan replies, trying for nonchalant, but he fears adam can hear the hitch in his voice.

“You know perfectly well what,” Adam sighs, looking at Ronan as Ronan looks at him. They’re sitting shoulder to shoulder, their legs already jumbled up in the fall. Neither of them flinched away at the brutally close contact. This was always so _them_. “Don’t play dumb, Lynch. It doesn’t become you,” he chastises as he reaches up with his free hand to swipe the pad of his thumb across one sharp cheekbone. He cradles Ronan’s face there and is relieved when he leans into the touch.

Their breaths mingle, shared air between them as adam leans in to close the gaps that separate them. “Don’t move,” he whispers, although he doesn’t expect Ronan will.

He doesn’t. 

It’s the slightest press of lips on lips, like every other piece of physical contact shared between them. With this final piece, however, their puzzle is slotted into place and they fit like they’ve always belonged, just so. Ronan’s fingers find their way to the collar of Adam’s Coca-Cola shirt and tugs, an unconscious action as Adam begins to pull away from the kiss with a sigh.

Their foreheads press together, the tip of adam’s nose nuzzling up against the bridge of Ronan’s. Adam’s got infinite patience to see this through properly, but now that Ronan’s had a taste, he’s moving full speed ahead. his hand curled around a fistful of cotton fabric reels Adam back in, open mouthed and greedy.

Between them, their fingers squeeze together and release in a steady pulse, like a third fluttering heartbeat.

And so it is.

And so it may be.

 


	2. First Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They quickly find they’re a sensual pair, swallowed up by sensory experiences of exploring each other’s bodies. For Ronan, it's Adam's hands. For Adam, it's Ronan's tattoos.

I.

They quickly find they’re a sensual pair, swallowed up by sensory experiences of exploring each other’s bodies. Ronan holds Adam’s hand in his, keeping their eyes locked as his head dips down to press lips to tender flesh of one knuckle, then the other four in turn. He unfurls Adam’s fingers and guides them up against his cheek. Adam cups his face there and Ronan turns his head into the touch so his lips might brush gentle against his palm. Adam’s fingers curl once more, his thumb tracing along the knife’s edge of Ronan’s mouth. He can feel the wicked grin spreading against his fingertips. Lips part just so, enough for Adam’s finger to slip between teeth. He bites down, playful, but wanting and Ronan closes his eyes and thinks, _just this_.

Later, Ronan sinks belly down and boneless into the mattress, Adam returning the tactile favour in kind. If Adam’s hands are Ronan’s object of worship, Ronan’s tattoos are Adam’s. He nuzzles the skin stretched taut across Ronan’s back, inked black with intricate patterns. The bridge of his nose traces vertical cross-hatches, sending the first spark deep through Ronan’s veins. Adam’s breath fogs up the mirrors of his mind, white noise for the frenetic energy slicing through him. It’s a slow progression. Adam’s lips take their sweet time in memorizing every detail of the map Ronan’s left him. When Ronan expects he can be unravelled no further, Adam’s mouth eases. His bereavement at the sudden lack of contact drifts away, unnoticed, when Adam leans down once more. Lips part and this time, Adam’s tongue traces the lazy, swirls drifting chaos along his back. 

III.

Ronan’s never been one to cook. Food has never been a consideration beyond necessary sustenance for survival. Energy drinks and a packet of chips would easily do the trick for long enough. But once he and Adam became a unit, food suddenly felt like a very different necessity than it had been at Monmouth. He suddenly wants to learn something for Adam, do something to keep him safe and whole.

He’s not the most exceptional cook in existence, but when Adam stumbles through the front door after a long day at work with a crumpled little smile through his exhaustion at the smell of dinner wafting from the kitchen and into the rest of the tiny apartment he calls home, Ronan knows his toil worth it. 

Adam slumps limp into Ronan’s waiting arms, grateful for the solid body holding him up. Ronan deposits him on the couch and curls up, sitting cross-legged on the cushion behind him. His fingers begin to dig deep into Adam’s shoulders, digging the knots out of his tense muscles. Adam lets out a soft sigh and crumples, a worn, but firm “I love you,” ever on his lips. Ronan doesn’t have to say it back. His hands have said more than enough.


End file.
